


i'm a mess for you

by foxerica (ericaismeg)



Series: rare ships [39]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, F/M, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-17
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-10-19 22:18:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10649184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ericaismeg/pseuds/foxerica
Summary: "Whatever you do, don't flush."





	i'm a mess for you

**_I’m a mess for you_ **

✿ ✿ ✿ 

Kira yawns, scratching the back of her head, and walks into the bathroom. She’s so damn tired from staying up until 4am to finish her project. Kira yanks down her pajama bottoms and sits on the toilet.

“Whatever you do, don’t flush.”

She almost jumps off the seat. Kira opens her eyes…really opens them this time, and realizes that the shower is running. Her brain isn’t quite awake yet. “Jackson! What the hell. Don’t you close the door when you’re showering?”

“Actually,” her new roommate’s voice comes from the other side of the curtain. “I like the draft of cool air when I shower, because I like my water hot. And I thought that the fact that the shower was running was a pretty big clue that I was in here?”

Kira huffs, feeling a little more awake but like she could use three cups of coffee before holding a reasonable conversation. She grabs some toilet paper, finishes up, and flushes after she stands up.

“Oh fuck!”

“Kira!” Jackson shouts. He yelps a moment later, and she hears him run to the opposite side of the tub to get away from the extremely hot water. He curses and says, “It’s too hot!”

Then the shower curtain flings open and a naked Jackson is hopping onto the bath mat. Kira squeaks, spinning away from him with her hands on her eyes. Okay, so moving in with Jackson is definitely going to be an adjustment. If only Scott hadn’t fallen madly in love with Stiles…then she’d still be living with Scott in their two bedroom apartment across town. But she’d still be living with her ex-boyfriend and that’s not really healthy. They’d only broken up two months ago.

Stiles had been living with Jackson up until that point, and neither of the boys had wanted to screw over their roommates. So they had taken Kira and Jackson out for drinks and pitched the idea of a switch. That way no one was left hanging with paying a full month’s of rent, looking for a new roommate, or moving into a one-bedroom.

It hadn’t seemed so unreasonable at the time. After all, she’d met Jackson a handful of times. He seemed decent. A little bit of a jerk, but nothing she couldn’t handle.

Except maybe this moment. She’s not sure she can handle knowing what Jackson looks like wet and naked. Because _oh my god._

“Sorry, Kira, it’s just–I don’t like my showers _that_  hot,” Jackson mumbles. “I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Don’t apologize. I forgot that I shouldn’t flush. Um, just let me wash my hands before you get back in. I won’t peek,” Kira says, stepping close to the counter. She flicks the tap on and puts soap on her hands.

Jackson snorts. “Are you sure you don’t want to? I don’t mind. I know that women often get curious about what I look like naked. Well, people in general do. It’s okay.”

“No!” Kira protests, but that’s mostly because he’s standing in line of view in the mirror. She’s not sure if he can tell that, but the angle is just right and…well, he’s not even covering himself right now. Kira ducks her head, feeling her cheeks start to burn. This is ridiculous. “Just, um, maybe shut the door when you shower from now on?”

“Or you could listen to hear if it’s running before walking in if it bothers you,” Jackson tells her.

She shakes her hands in the air before wiping them dry on the hand towel. Kira steals a glance in the mirror and her eyes meet Jackson’s. She turns away, and pauses at the door before saying, “Please don’t forget to dry the floor. Wouldn’t want to get mold.”

Kira practically runs back to her bedroom. She doesn’t come out until she’s dressed, her hair is done, and her makeup is on-point. It doesn’t matter though, because it seems as if Jackson left not long after his shower. She sits down at the stool at the breakfast bar and puts her head on the marble.

“Ugh.”

✿ ✿ ✿

 

“What’s going on with you these days?” Tracy asks Kira. Kira looks up from her phone. She’s been anxiously waiting to see if she can go home to the apartment or if Jackson had managed to find someone to bring back at the party he was going to. He had cracked a joke about it, and normally, Kira didn’t care. This time is a little different.

She knows what view Jackson’s partner will be enjoying.

“Nothing, Trace. It’s all good. How’s Alicia been?” Kira says, tucking her phone into her pocket. It’s on vibrate, so she should be able to feel it. Kira wonders what it means that her chest is very tight and her focus is fuzzy.

Tracy leans back in her chair. “Alicia’s been great. We celebrated our two-year anniversary last week.”

“Shut up. It’s been two years already?” Lydia asks. Kira jumps, because honestly? She’d forgotten that Lydia, Malia, and Allison are also here. She rubs the bridge of her nose.

“Two years, jeez. It’s flown by. Kira, are you sure you’re okay? You seem really stressed,” Allison says, placing a steaming hot mug of tea in front of her. “How has living with Jackson been?”

Her lips part. “Oh, it’s uh…it’s been…good.”

“Okay,” Malia says, stretching out her legs. “First off, no one believes that for a second. Secondly, what’s wrong with Jack? As far as I saw when I would visit Stiles, he was a pretty chill roommate. Which is shocking for him.”

Kira nods. “No, he’s great. He’s really…really great. It’s just…he’s always sleeping with people. And it kind of makes me uncomfortable?”

“Talk to him about it,” Lydia says. “I dated Jackson for three years. If you tell him that it makes you uncomfortable, he’ll stop it immediately.”

Kira looks up at her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Why does it make you uncomfortable?” Tracy asks.

“Um, well,” Kira says, shrugging. “I don’t know. It just does. I never know who’s going to be in our place, y’know? But he’s a great roommate otherwise. He cleans up after himself, he cooks sometimes, and we have Netflix marathons occasionally.”

 _And he still doesn’t shower with the bathroom door shut._  Kira can’t bring herself to share that story though.

“Just let us know if you need us to come as backup,” Tracy tells her. The others agree, and the conversation topic is dropped when Erica finally arrives. Kira sits back in her chair and stares at the bottle of wine in front of her.

Living with Jackson has been quite the experience. He’s much softer, much kinder than she’d ever expected from their occasional hangouts before becoming roommates. Sometimes, he’d surprise her with hot chocolate or breakfast. Other times, he’d let her rant for an hour about how crappy her job is. And then there were the moments when he’d brush a piece of her hair from her face before pulling her in for a hug.

Kira’s falling for Jackson faster than she can handle. He’s not interested in settling down, and she’s not interested in being another knotch on his bedpost. She reaches forward, grabs the bottle of wine, and chugs it while everyone’s paying attention to Erica’s story of the night.

 

✿ ✿ ✿ 

 

She knows she shouldn’t have drank so much. But it was so easy. They’d gone out to a club, and danced. My god, how they had danced. Kira has never jumped more in her entire life. She’d gotten free shots from the bartender because he’d liked her. She even got his number.

Kira pulls the napkin out of her pocket. She stares down at the number. The name reads _Matt._  A weird feeling washes over her and Kira lets the napkin slip from her finger tips.

She keeps walking. Tomorrow, Sober Kira will be _furious_  that she littered. But Present Kira is so damn tired. She turned down two girls, and four guys tonight. They had all seemed nice, pleasant, and well, into her. Yet Kira couldn’t imagine taking any of them home.

So she had gone to the bar for more shots.

And that’s how she ends up stumbling home, crying softly without any intention of stopping, and banging on the apartment door. Jackson doesn’t come immediately, so she figures he must be fucking someone. The idea makes her nauseous. She knows that she shouldn’t have gone and developed a crush on her roommate. What a mistake that is.

It’s too late now. Kira digs around in her purse for her keys. She hadn’t needed to find them because she’d followed someone into the building downstairs. Kira fumbles for a few minutes before she finally manages to pull them out. She opens the door, and hesitates walking in. All of the lights are on, so clearly Jackson’s home and awake.

Kira wipes her eyes and takes a deep breath. She can do this. She can pretend that her heart isn’t breaking that Jackson is with another person tonight. Kira locks the door behind her, and rests her forehead on it for a moment.

God, it’s so fucked up. Even the girls had agreed that it was a messy situation. She had, of course, been forced to tell them that she thinks she has developed feelings for Jackson because they had demanded to know why she kept turning down people.

She throws her purse on the couch, yanks her coat off and tosses it onto the chair, and slips her shoes off by the kitchen table. Then she makes her way into the bathroom and shuts the door as quietly as possible.

Kira stares at her reflection in the mirror. She takes a makeup remover cloth to her face, wiping it all away. She needs a new one to remove her bright red lipstick. She sniffs when she’s all done, because she’s managed to stop crying.

She unzips her dress and lets it fall to the ground. That’s when she moves to the toilet. She’s not entirely sure if she needs to pee or throw up, but she figures she should try peeing first.

Kira leans forward, her elbows on her legs, and her face in her palms.

“Um, Kira, everything okay?”

She screams, jumping. Kira lifts her head to see that Jackson is peeking out from behind the shower curtain. She slaps an arm across her exposed breasts, and the other over her crotch. “What the fuck, Jackson!”

“Sorry! Sorry, I didn’t think you’d be naked–” Jackson ducks back behind the curtain. “I was taking a shower and I had just turned it off when you came in. I know how much you hate that I shower with the door open, so I wasn’t going to say anything. But it sounded like you were crying.”

Kira squeezes her eyes shut. She doesn’t know how she finds the courage to snap, “Washing off your latest conquest?”

“They aren’t _conquests._  They’re people, Kira. And no. I had a girl spill her mixed drink on me at the club and I felt sticky when I got home so I decided to hop in the shower. I thought you were sleeping over at Tracy’s so um, I didn’t exactly bring my clothes in with me.”

“Of course.” Kira stands up, tugging her panties up. She flushes the toilet and washes her hands. She sniffs a little harder, because isn’t that the kicker?

She’s feeling sorry for herself, because while she’d been thinking that Jackson was hooking up with someone, he hadn’t been. She’d been wallowing in self-pity for nothing. Kira bends down to get her dress and holds it up to her chest.

“I’m going to bed, Jackson.”

“Okay.”

Before she shuts the door behind her, he calls out her name. She stops moving. “Yeah?”

“I’m really sorry, Kira. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine, Jackson. I just need some sleep.”

She makes her way to her room. Kira curls up underneath her comforter and squeezes her eyes shut tight. She cries silently. It was never like this with Scott. She’d figured out pretty early on that he was into her just as much as she was with him. But Jackson…

With Jackson, there are small moments. Small moments that make Kira wonder _what if._ It might be the way he looks at her after she tells him a joke, or how he always seems to know how she’s feeling. It could be when they go out drinking with their mutual friends and he comes over to dance with her. When he pays more attention to her than anyone else. Kira doesn’t understand why it always has to be small moments.

God, she wants a big moment with Jackson. A meaningful moment that will lead to…something. She’s not even sure what she wants. Dating Jackson would be great, but what if it messes up their relationship? She likes how close they’ve become.

It’s exhausting to think about, so eventually, Kira passes out with tears on her cheeks.

 

✿ ✿ ✿

 

“Things are well with you and Stiles?” Kira asks a few months later. She’s gotten so much better at being composed around her friends, and especially Jackson. No one would ever figure out how much she aches inside. Kira glances at Scott; they’re waiting in line to get a coffee.

He smiles, tucking his phone into his pocket. “Things are really, really well. Thanks for being so cool about it all.”

“Of course, Scott.”

“I mean it, Kira. Not everyone would’ve been willing to switch apartments so their ex-boyfriend could move in with his new boyfriend,” Scott tells her. He’s smiling at her. It’s the same smile that once gave her butterflies. Instead, it’s comforting. She leans against his arm.

“I love you, Scott. We always said friends first. I meant it, and I know you did too.” Kira puts her hand on his, and they intertwine their fingers out of habit. “You were a great boyfriend, but you’re an even better friend. I’m glad that Stiles is making you happy. I didn’t really doubt that, because you two have always acted like soul mates. It’s just really nice to see him make you smile.”

Scott squeezes her hand. They’re called up next, and he orders their drinks without asking Kira what she’d like. He knows. He ends up paying, and he takes his hand from Kira’s to do so.

She feels like she’s been hit with a ton of bricks. Her heart skips a beat or two, her chest tightens, and her throat seems to be thick. Kira tries to take a deep breath and when Scott puts his hand on her lower back to guide her away from the counter to wait for their drinks, she has a hard time fighting back the urge to cry.

Scott’s hand is no longer hers to hold.

Not that she wants to hold his hand anymore, anyway. No, instead, she wants to hold Jackson’s. She wants to feel his arms wrapped around her, listen to him whisper sweet nothings in her ear, and make promises for the future. Kira wants to come home and climb onto Jackson’s lap to watch Netflix together. She wants to make dinner with him while they talk about their days. She wants…

Fuck. She wants so much.

“Kira, you okay? You’ve been a little dazed…” Scott says, nudging her. She blinks and doesn’t remember getting her drink or sitting down with Scott. She must have been in auto-pilot.

Kira puts her head on the table. She mumbles something that she knows Scott can’t hear, so when he asks her to repeat it, she says it a little louder. “I think I’m in love with Jackson.”

Scott chokes - whether on his drink or the air around him, Kira can’t be sure. She rolls her head to the side and looks up at him with one eye. She can’t make herself lift her head. “You…what? You and Jackson? Really? I mean…wow.”

“I know!” she says, frustrated. She bangs her forehead off the table a few times, but Scott puts an end to that. When she sits up and looks at him, she feels the tears threatening harder. “I don’t–I mean–”

“Jackson’s always talking about you,” Scott say, quietly. “I just didn’t realize that it meant something more. But he likes to go about how incredible you are and how much you’ve grown to mean to him and how he loves it when you’re grumpy because he thinks it’s the most endearing side of you. And he told me about how you cried during some comedy movie you watched because you found a moment to be so…”

“Profound,” Kira finishes for him.

“Yeah.”

“He really talks about me a lot?” Kira asks.

“Yeah. He loves you. I mean, I don’t know if he _loves_  loves you, but I do know that he cares very much for you. He asked me about our relationship a bit and…wow, I’m an idiot. I should’ve picked up on it. So you two are together, then?” Scott takes a sip of his coffee. “How long has it been? Three or four months?”

“Um, no.” Kira shakes her head. “It’s not mutual. Jackson has no idea that I feel anything for him.”

Scott frowns. “Really? Because I’m replaying our previous conversations in my head and I remember Jackson saying he hasn’t slept with anyone in like two months. And I couldn’t imagine him saying that unless he was seeing someone. Or planning on seeing someone.”

Kira doesn’t know what to say to that or how to process it. She decides to change the subject, but she knows that Scott wants to keep talking about Jackson. It’s ridiculous, how she could feel so much for a person who probably has no idea that she’s even an option.

 

✿ ✿ ✿

 

When Kira hears the iPhone on the counter ringing, she doesn’t think about it. She picks it up and says, “Hello.”

“Hi there, may I speak to Jackson Whittemore?” a polite, professional voice comes from.

Kira pulls the phone from her ear and realizes she had, indeed, picked up Jackson’s cell phone instead of hers. She says, “Oh, um, he’s in the shower right now actually. Can I take a message?”

“Just let him know it’s the doctor’s office and he’s all good,” the voice says. “He doesn’t need to call us back or anything. Have a great day!”

Kira hangs up the phone, and stares at it for a moment. He’s all good? _What does that mean?_  She walks over to the bathroom and knocks on the door. Jackson shouts, “Come in!”

When she steps into the bathroom, she says, “Um, I answered your phone by accident. It was your doctor’s office. They told me to tell you that you’re all good. Whatever that means.”

“I am?” Jackson asks, peeking his head around the curtain. “That’s a relief.”

“Um, yeah. So I thought you should know.”

“I got tested for STIs,” Jackson explains. His head disappears behind the curtain and she can hear him move back under the water. “It’s been a while since I’ve been tested. I haven’t had sex in almost three months now, so I figured it was a great time to get tested…just in case.”

Kira stares at the curtain. God, it’s such an ugly shower curtain. And then…then it hits Kira. “You haven’t had sex in three months?”

“Um. No. You told me it made you uncomfortable,” Jackson answers. She can’t see his face and she wants to. God, she wants to see his face right now.

“To constantly have strangers come in and out of the apartment, yeah. Not that you slept around. You can do whatever you want,” Kira says. She should leave the bathroom, but it seems as if her feet don’t want to move.

Jackson lets out a laugh. “Yeah, okay, well. I also didn’t really feel like having sex with other people.”

“That’s…okay, that’s fine,” Kira says. “Um. I should…”

“Kira?”

“Yeah.”

“I hope you know that you mean a lot to me. I would never want to make you uncomfortable, especially in your own apartment. You’ve been acting a little weird, and I just didn’t want to be the reason for it…”

Kira’s phone buzzes in her pocket. She pulls it out, because she’s not sure what to say to Jackson.

 

**SCOTT:** _Jackson told Lydia that he stopped sleeping w people bc he likes you_   
**SCOTT:** _if you’re in love w him, then you should go for it_   
**SCOTT:** _#supportiveexboyfriend_   
**SCOTT:** _also stiles says that you need to make the first move bc he doesn’t make moves on the girls he’s really into_   
**SCOTT:** _good luck!_

 

She smiles. Her ex-boyfriend and his boyfriend are the best. Kira sets her phone on the counter. “You know, Jackson, there is a reason I have been acting weird.”

“Do you want to talk about it when I get out of the shower?”

Kira slips her jeans off. Then her shirt. She lets her bra fall to the floor, and it makes a noise when it bounces off the closed toilet seat.

“Kira?”

She shimmies out of her panties and then takes a deep breath. Kira pushes part of the curtain back and puts a leg in. “Is this okay?”

“Um, yes,” Jackson says, but he sounds confused as hell. Kira steps into the shower and looks at him. “Wow. You look….fucking hell, you look beautiful, Kira.”

A bright smile crosses her face. “You know Jackson…Scott just told me that you told Lydia you’re into me.”

“I–wow, okay, I’m going to kill Lydia.”

“Dude, I’m standing in the shower with you _naked._  Do you really think that wasn’t a good thing?”

“Good point. Kira…does this mean…”

She steps forward, puts her hands on his cheeks, stands on her tiptoes, and presses her lips against his. The hot water runs over them, and Jackson spins Kira around so her back is on the cold shower wall. She gasps in surprise, and Jackson runs his lips all over her neck. He starts to move down her body, and Kira feels like she can’t breathe anymore.

“More. I need…more.”

Jackson moves his way back up to her lips, kissing her in a way that she’s never been kissed before: with raw, uninhibited need and desire.

 

✿ ✿ ✿

 

“Think you’ll start to shower with the door unlocked from now on?” Jackson asks, playing with her hands. They’re lying in his bed with his sheets and comforter all skewed. Her head is tucked on his shoulder, and her cheek rests on his bare collarbone. He can’t stop touching her, and she can’t stop touching him.

“Hmm. I might have to consider it,” Kira whispers. She moves her head to look up at him, and gives him a light kiss. “I think I might need some more convincing. What’s in it for me?”

Jackson laughs, and pulls her in closer to him. “God, I think I love you, Kira Yukimura.”

“Mmm,” she manages. She kisses his neck. “I think I love you too, Jackson Whittemore. Against all odds, you won me over.”

He grins. “Yeah, right. Admit it, you’ve been keen on me ever since you saw me naked.”

Kira tosses her head back in laughter before she runs her hand up his chest. “Yeah, okay, maybe. You caught me.”

Jackson presses his lips against her forehead. She closes her eyes and for the first time in months, she finally feels settled and content.

 

✿ ✿ ✿


End file.
